Occupational Hazards
by Checkerboards
Summary: What is the Hatter if he isn't mad?
1. Drink Me

The recreation room at Arkham Asylum was poorly named. Recreation generally implies fun or at the very least, some mildly entertaining way to pass the time. Neither were allowed within its four walls.

Of course, that was mainly due to the inhabitants, to whom 'fun' translated into 'mayhem' and 'activity' generally meant, well, 'mayhem'. The recreation room had been specifically designed to avoid any prospect of mayhem. There was a television (bolted to the wall inside a plexiglass box), there were magazines (with the staples removed so that pages flew everywhere), and there were jigsaw puzzles which no one ever touched.

And, of course, there was the chess table. The regulations stated quite clearly that board games were not allowed. There had been too many deaths and injuries from little things like sharpened Monopoly pieces and carefully reshaped Sorry! tokens, not to mention the Joker's last elaborate masterpiece of a deathtrap involving two Guess Who? boards and the pegs from two games of Battleship. Children's games had been deemed to be completely unsafe.

The handful of intellectuals among the rogues, desperate for mental stimulation, had weaseled their way around that particular rule by incising a chessboard directly onto one of the table tops with a broken bedspring. The chessmen were jigsaw puzzle pieces turned over to reveal dull grey or dirty brown cardboard backing with letters inscribed on them.

Jervis Tetch was idly pushing one of these pieces about on the table in front of him. He watched with boredom as the rogues went about their usual business. Some, like the Riddler, retreated to solitary pursuits of crosswords or reading. Some, like the Ventriloquist and Scarface, opted for a more social way to spend the time, carefully not discussing anything that might be of actual interest since the orderlies tended to eavesdrop.

The Mad Hatter and the Scarecrow generally wound up at the chess table. They'd played approximately fifteen hundred games of chess over the years. Of them all, Jervis Tetch had won precisely two. Jervis didn't much care for strategy, or the thrill of winning, or any of the traditional reasons to play the game. Matching his wits against Jonathan Crane merely meant that he could relive parts of Through the Looking-Glass while Jonathan could get his daily fill of feeling superior to someone. Everyone won.

Except for today, when the only ones winning were the doctors. Jervis sighed and flicked the piece labeled "BLACK KING" across the table toward Jonathan Crane. It hit him in the face. There were a few seconds of silence as Jonathan's heavily drugged mind struggled to process what had just happened. "Hey," he finally said. Another round of silence. "Don't."

At least his own medications weren't affecting him that badly. He didn't like taking them. They made him tired and grumpy. But the doctors had found out that he was hiding his pills in his mattress, so they'd switched him over to liquids...and when a three-hundred-pound orderly handed him a cup of bitter liquid and gave him the option of drinking it or having it forced down his throat in a seclusion room, the option that allowed him to retain some of his rather sparse dignity prevailed.

He breathed a short, sharp sigh of irritation. This was useless. He could still talk to Crane, he supposed - it's not like the man normally answered him, anyway - but it would be even more like talking to a brick wall today. He sighed and picked up another piece, twisting it round in his fingers as he stared out the window.

He could use this time to plan another heist, he supposed. But somehow, that didn't feel right either. How long had he been doing this? Ten years? Twenty? How many more theme crimes could he possibly pull out of two little books? Well, Lewis Carroll had written a large number of other things. He could switch over to the poems for a while, or 'Sylvie and Bruno'...no. He wasn't the Mad Carroller, he was the Mad _Hatter_.

Not that that seemed to mean much nowadays. It had been fun at first - living the dream, as it were - but the whole routine had gotten stale. Arkham to hideout to heist to Arkham, every time with new injuries, every time with the same conviction that he'd win out next time. How long had it been since it was fun?

When was the last time he'd actually _had_ any fun? He frowned. His last crime had been inspired, certainly, and it had been mildly enjoyable right up to the point that Batman had kicked him repeatedly in the head...but it hadn't actually been _fun_ at any point.

He couldn't remember having fun at any point recently. In fact, his life had been lacking in a lot of respects. He couldn't remember the last time that he'd had a friend that didn't have one of his mind-control chips tucked behind their ear. He couldn't count the rogues as friends. Oh, they were civil enough to one another, certainly, but it was only because they happened to live together in the asylum. It did not do to irritate your psychotically homicidal neighbors with petty things like arguments, which is why with a real effort they had managed to keep the fights down to three or four a week. How many times had the others used him as a convenient punching bag? (Of course, he wasn't entirely blameless, he had to admit. Civil neighbors didn't point out to Two-Face that his entire psychosis was thoroughly at odds with the reality of how the brain worked, for example. That beating had been entirely worth it for the look on each half of Harvey's bifurcated face.)

And girls! He missed girls. The only females he ever saw on a regular basis anymore were Poison Ivy (beautiful, yes, but deadly) Harley Quinn (beautiful, deadly and most emphatically taken) and his therapist (boring, ugly, and taken). His various crew of Alices over the years had been fine to take tea with, but they hadn't exactly been girlfriend material.

He needed a distraction. He flicked another puzzle piece at the Scarecrow. Normally Crane would have been extraordinarily put out with him at this point, maybe even going so far as to threaten to burn his mind out with terror or something similar. This time, he merely blinked slowly at him and tilted his head to one side.

Okay, so that wasn't going to help. Jervis turned to the rest of the room, wondering if anything interesting was happening. The Riddler and Two-Face were engaged in a brisk game of double solitaire in the corner. Jervis sat, head on his hand, and watched them quietly slap cards down onto piles. When the game was over, they silently shook hands, separated out the decks, and laid out the game again. It was about as friendly as most of the rogues ever got with one another in Arkham, since the doctors tended to look upon every single social interaction between them as a dangerous thing.

Was there entertainment to be had in other parts of the room? Jervis shifted his gaze. Well, if Harley Quinn was snuggled any closer to the Joker they'd fuse into one being, but watching the Joker be all lovey-dovey made his stomach turn. He, the rest of the rogues, and probably everyone in the asylum knew that the Joker's occasional displays of affection for Harley were as artificial as the cheese sauce on the cafeteria's ham sandwiches, but it still just wasn't right.

He was bored, depressed, and lonely. It wasn't supposed to be like this. When had his Wonderland of fun turned into this trash hole of a life?

Jervis Tetch sighed. "You know," he confided to the Scarecrow, "I'm thinking of quitting."

When this non-Wonderland quote sank into the Scarecrow's head, his eyes widened in shock. Jervis Tetch not quoting Lewis Carroll was like Batman dressing in pink. "Can't quit," Jonathan managed to mumble. "Can't do it."

Jervis was affronted. He'd managed to do quite well for himself before becoming a rogue! Surely he could do just as well now. "You think I can't do it?" he snapped.

"Can't," the Scarecrow repeated. "Too scared..."

"Watch me," Jervis said, shoving himself up from the table. He'd get out of this asylum and become a normal human being again. To hell with Alice in Wonderland, to hell with Lewis Carroll, and to hell with being locked away for the rest of his life in a room full of lunatics! He stormed off to the other side of the room.

"...they won't let you," the Scarecrow finished, fighting to get the words out before Jervis was too far away.

(_to be continued_)

_Author's Note: Jervis' uncivil behavior appeared in Arkham Asylum: Living Hell. _


	2. The Golden Key

Going insane is easy. It is amazingly simple for anyone with the right motivation to take their mind off the hook for a while and scamper blissfully through fields of soft green grass, unaware that they are actually prancing half-naked down the highway during rush hour. After all, if life is going to be terrible _anyway_, you may as well enjoy yourself during your very own private apocalypse.

Going sane was trickier. It was very, very difficult to convince the doctors at Arkham Asylum that you had retrieved all of your marbles, particularly after you'd seemingly made it your life's work to scatter them as far as possible.

However, for Jervis, it wasn't going to take that long. After all, he had a plan, didn't he? Just because of that, he was _miles_ ahead of most of the other inmates. Okay, so it was more of a plan to eventually plan something, but he still had a plan. He was going to get sane and get out of there.

He'd showed up to his next therapy session brimming with determination. His therapist hadn't noticed. "Come in, Jervis," she invited in a bored tone, as she always did, flipping on the tape recorder so that she could decipher what he said later on. "What would you like to discuss today? I believe last time we were talking about..." she squinted at her papers, "the mouse's tale?"

"Yeah," Jervis muttered. Well, _he_ had been talking about it. _She_ had been staring at the clock on the wall. "The Mouse's tail."

They sat in silence for a full ten minutes as Jervis fought to think of something to say. There was a very good reason why he'd retreated into the world of quotes: one always had something to say when one was parroting someone else. What was he supposed to be talking about here, anyway? He'd never taken one of these sessions seriously before.

What would a sane, healthy person say at a session with their psychiatrist? Well, goodbye, obviously, but what would they say before that? His right leg started to bounce up and down as he racked his brain for something to say. Anything.

"You seem upset," the psychiatrist said uninterestedly, breaking the silence. "Is something bothering you?"

"_Oh, you sing - I've forgotten the words_." No, dammit, no! He wasn't going back to Wonderland now! "I mean," he floundered, trying desperately to come up with the words to say what he wanted to say. "I..."

His purple-faced frustration had finally caught the doctor's full attention. She studied him as his fingers fidgeted anxiously. "Calm down," she advised.

He sank back into the chair, defeated. Well, maybe he could start with quotes and work his way into using real English later. "_I don't want to be anybody's prisoner_," he said slowly.

She tilted her head into a pose somewhat reminiscent of the RCA dog, which was rather appropriate considering the puffy bags under her eyes and her oversized ears. "Well, what do you want?" she asked.

He opened his mouth. He closed it again with a shrug. What did he want? He didn't know. Oh, certainly he had his short-term goal - getting out of Arkham - but what did he want out of life? He'd spent so many years doing nothing but mouthing another man's words and living in clouds of fantasy that he didn't know what he really wanted out of life. He didn't even really know who he was anymore under the layers of fiction that he'd wrapped around himself like a security blanket. "_Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle,_" he murmured, mostly to himself.

Naturally, she heard him. "You should know who you are," she said bluntly. "You seemed to have a pretty good idea of it yesterday."

"_Who am I then? Tell me that first, and then, if I like being that person, I'll come up: if not, I'll stay down here till I'm somebody else_," he shot back.

"Who would you like to be?" she challenged.

"Anyone but me," he snapped. His eyes widened. He'd done it! He'd said something that wasn't a quote!

Could he do it again? What could he say? Anything! The sky was the limit!...he couldn't think of anything.

"Why?" the psychiatrist asked.

How could he possibly explain it to her? How could you boil down years of delusions and anger and pain? How could you put words to something that you felt every day like a hole in your heart? "_I don't like belonging to another person's dream_," he whispered.

She examined him with suspicious eyes. "Are you actually trying to tell me something, or are you just quoting at me?" she said, distrust lurking around the edges of her words.

He fumed silently. Of _course_ he was saying something, any halfwit could tell that! "_I am so very tired of being all alone here,_" he sighed.

She stared at him. "You're not quoting? You're actually _talking_?"

He fought back an urge to rip into her with only the best Victorian nonsense. Making her angry was not going to help him in the slightest - and neither was speaking in riddles, for that matter. What he needed was to get her on his side. How had the Joker tempted Quinn over to his side...

Sympathy!

He forced a pleading look onto his face and tried to look as small and helpless as possible. The Joker may have been able to lure Quinn over to their side by playing himself as a mix of lighthearted jester and dark, troubled enigma, but that would never work for someone who needed chairs to reach the top shelf and who could probably use a few thousand dollars worth of orthodontics. "_Help me_," he whimpered.

The psychiatrist nodded earnestly. "Of course," she smiled, leaning slightly over her desk. "I'll give you all the help I can." Even without any of his wonderful little devices, he could clearly read her thoughts: if she 'cured' him, she'd be in line for a pay raise, possibly a round of interviews on the talk shows, and maybe she'd land a book deal that could make her rich beyond her wildest dreams.

Well, let her be happy about it. He didn't care. All that mattered was getting himself out of here.

* * *

_Six months later_

Jervis slouched his way down the corridor. To the world at large, and particularly to the newly-hired orderly marching at his side, the Mad Hatter appeared to be the very soul of contrite and ill-used persons. His reddened eyes and his furrowed brow spoke of a man desperately trying to reconcile his past with his present.

The orderly let him back into his cell. "Feel better, Mr. Tetch," he offered gently before scurrying away to fetch the next inmate to the therapists. Jervis slumped onto his bed and buried his face in his pillow.

_Suckers_! he thought, letting the pillow mask the grin that he didn't dare wear in the therapist's office. Once he'd gotten past the trouble of making up his own sentences again, therapy had turned out to be _easy. _A cakewalk! Simple as a queen becoming a sheep...no! Not that! Just easy, that's all. The hardest part of therapy was keeping a straight face. Faking sobs was simple enough, particularly with the aid of a tissue or two to mop up "tears" as necessary.

He'd spent his free time for the last six months coming up with a childhood that should wring the heart of anyone. Mean parents...no, neglectful parents...no, wait, _abusive_ neglectful parents that forbade him from doing anything but reading! Yes! And so of _course_ he'd turned to Alice as a source of comfort and Lewis Carroll as a surrogate parent.

Or something like that. Really, all he had to do was imply horrors in his past with a somewhat offhand demeanor and the therapist was putty in his hands. His look of surprise when she gently broke the news that not all children, for example, slept on the kitchen floor under a ratty beach towel was enough to push her into complete acceptance of _that_ story.

"Mr. Tetch?" He raised a suitably upset face to see the new orderly tapping at his window. "Would you like to go to the recreation room? Your doctor has an assignment for you," he added, waving the small bundle of papers in his hand.

An assignment? This sounded promising. He nodded and joined the orderly in the hallway, sneaking looks at the papers whenever they came into view.

The orderly led him to an empty table in the corner. "Here you go, Mr. Tetch," he said, politely offering the sheaf of papers. "If you need anything, let me know."

Jervis carefully waited to roll his eyes until no one was looking at him. Did the boy really think that treating them like people was going to keep him safe? Calling the rogues Mr. and Ms. wasn't going to change the fact that orderlies suffered more casualties than the court of the King and Queen of Hearts.

He opened the bundle of papers and flipped through them. Most of them were blank notebook paper. A small envelope containing a pair of small charcoal sticks was attached to the neatly typed letter on top. He skimmed it, sifting through the psychological babble to unearth its meaning with the practice one only acquired with long hours in the therapy chair.

He was to write a resume. _As if anyone on the outside would actually hire Jervis Tetch_, he thought irritably. It would have been much better to start over as someone else, someone who _hadn't_ held large amounts of the city under his control at one time or another. But he had to be himself, as inconvenient as it was.

With a sigh, he began to write. He had only been a legitimate scientist for a short while in his early adult life. After he'd witnessed the blatant thievery that occurred in the academic community as a matter of course, he'd decided that he may as well blatantly thieve things that would make him very rich very quickly. As a bonus, he could wear whatever he pleased and speak however he chose...and he had chosen to emulate the Mad Hatter, whose life of carefree lunacy had always appealed to him. He had maybe gone a touch overboard with that, but...

But this was not helping him with his resume. He stared at the half-blank page. He couldn't exactly put that his last position was as a criminal mastermind, but he couldn't leave it blank, either. He drummed charcoal-covered fingers on the tabletop.

Should he simply list his skills? He did have a unique and varied set of skills that could take him far in a lot of industries. Unfortunately, he'd tended to use them all in his not-quite-legal dealings with people. No, he'd do better to leave all of them off. After all, Dr. Henry Holmes wouldn't have put his skill with architecture on _his_ resume.

Hmm. He had to tell the truth, but no one said it had to be the _truth_ truth, did they? He brightened and carefully wrote "_Owned and ran small, private business dealing in acquisitions and classic literature_." Well, it was kind of the truth, wasn't it? It was true enough to please his therapist, and that was all that really mattered. "_Responsibilities included procurement, management of employees..._" At least it was something to fill the page with. It even sounded like he'd spent his life being a productive citizen instead of stealing things from actual productive citizens.

A throat was cleared above him. Acting purely on instinct, Jervis snatched the papers close to his chest and glared suspiciously at whoever it was that had interrupted him. The Riddler grinned cheekily down at him. "What do you want, Edward?" Jervis sighed irritably.

"So it's true," Nygma said, dropping into the chair across the table, uninvited. Jervis scowled at him. He was _busy_. "You really are out of Wonderland."

"Yes, I am," Jervis said, trying to imply that the sentence ended with _and I'm too busy to talk right now_.

Nygma ignored it, settling in with one jumpsuit-clad leg crossed casually across the other. "So what will you do?"

"I don't know. Get a job?" Jervis said, nettled.

The Riddler shook his head. "You're not the first to try and go down that rabbit hole-"

"You don't have to quote that around me anymore," Jervis snapped.

"Force of habit. You're not the only one to try something new," Nygma rephrased, glancing across the room to where Harley Quinn sat chatting idly with Poison Ivy.

"Yes, well, maybe I'll be the only one to succeed," Jervis said, knowing full well that the Riddler's last attempt at reforming had ended in a spectacular explosion and a complete psychotic breakdown that had left him screeching questions at himself for weeks. Everyone with ears remembered _that_ little event.

Nygma scowled at him. "It's harder than it looks," he informed him before stalking back to his crosswords.

Jervis shrugged. So the Riddler had failed. So what? It didn't matter that Nygma hadn't been able to cut it on the outside, or that Isley and Wesker and Quinn and all the rest had botched their various attempts at normalcy. It was perfectly possible that he'd succeed. And if it _was_ impossible, well, that was fine too. Why, sometimes he'd believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast...

_No_! The Red Queen had nothing to do with this. It _wasn't_ impossible, and he _was_ sane. He _was_!

He redoubled his efforts on the little piece of paper, trying to prove it to himself as firmly as he could while fervently wishing that he could be trusted with a pen.

(_to be continued_)

_Author's Note: Most of Jervis' italicized lines (and some that aren't) are direct quotes from either Alice in Wonderland or Through the Looking-Glass. Dr. H. H. Holmes is as close to a real-life rogue as one could get, with particular attention paid to his castle full of deathtraps. Eddie's breakdown is from the Batman: the Animated Series episode "Riddler's Reform"._


	3. The Caterpillar and the Pigeon

Getting out of Arkham without permission was relatively easy. You merely had to drop a few bribes, memorize the layout of the hallways, and time your elopement to the perfect moment when all the guards were on their coffee breaks.

Getting out of Arkham with permission was exponentially harder. There were papers to sign, and papers to have signed, and meetings to attend, and papers to sign, and boards to look suitably chastened and sane in front of, and more papers to sign, and endless rounds of sideways looks from the members of the rogues' gallery as Jervis Tetch did his best to leave them all behind.

But he'd done it. He'd fought the twin demons of paperwork and bureaucracy, battled the seemingly endless rounds of therapy (occupational, talk, art, dance, group, cognitive behavioural and all the rest) and shoved his way politely toward Arkham's big iron doors without a vorpal sword or a sharp umbrella in sight. He was minutes, no, _seconds_ away from the final round of forms. Freedom was in his grasp!

He shifted impatiently from foot to foot as his soon-to-be-former therapist and a clearly bored secretary piled clipboards packed with forms in front of him. He didn't even bother reading any of them before he signed them. It was common knowledge that you should always read what you were signing, but common knowledge could take a hike until he no longer had writer's cramp and a headache from squinting at reams of tiny print.

"And who will be picking you up?" his therapist asked.

He looked up at her, brows knit with confusion. "Picking me up? I was under the impression that I was being housed by the city."

"You are," the therapist quickly assured him, "in Wayne Gardens Halfway House. Once you get there, you'll be able to ride the bus and the subway to wherever you need to go." The possibility that he'd one day be able to own and operate a vehicle was fairly remote, given that his license had been suspended indefinitely for driving like...well, for driving like a lunatic, which he had been at the time.

"But buses don't run to Arkham," Jervis said flatly.

"Exactly."

"And I suppose the administration isn't going to offer me a cab?" he pressed on.

"Budget cuts," the secretary shrugged. "We could wait 'til the cops do their daily dropoff and you could ride back with them, I guess."

Return to civilization in a cop car? No _thank_ you. "I'm sure I can find a ride," he smiled as charmingly as possible. "May I borrow your telephone book?"

"You don't know the number?" The therapist raised one bushy eyebrow in a demand for explanations.

"Alas, my memory is not what it used to be," he sighed. "I had all of my acquaintances listed on my cellular phone, but regretfully it was..._misplaced_," he said with an air of mild inconvenience. It had been a little more than inconvenient when that last kick from Batman had snapped the phone in two, but it could have been worse - it could have been his leg.

The secretary unearthed a phone book from beneath a stack of clipboards and shoved it across her desk. With a nod of thanks, he paged through it. McConnell...McConnell..._there_ it was.

He reached for the phone. The therapist intercepted his hand by placing her own meaty appendage on the telephone receiver. "Who are you calling?" she asked, with only a hint of suspicion in her voice.

"Jeff McConnell," he answered lightly.

"You can't call him," she said, reminding him of something he'd never been told. "You signed that paper, remember?"

"But I have to call _someone_ to pick me up," he protested.

The secretary snapped her gum. "Yeah, but you can't call anyone who used to work for you. Y'know. Your theme guys. You're not allowed to talk to 'em anymore."

"But the Dormo..._Jeff_ is the only one I know with a car," he said reasonably.

"Not my problem," she said dismissively. "Call a cab or something."

"And pay for it how?" he demanded. "I don't exactly have a supply of cash on me at the moment." It was true. He'd never made a habit of keeping cash on him - what would be the point? - and he didn't exactly have a bank card or a checkbook. Those things were for people who wanted to put money _in_ banks, not take it out.

"Not my problem," she repeated. "Doncha have any family around here?"

He closed his eyes and massaged the bridge of his nose with pinched fingers. As a matter of fact, he _did_ have family in the area...but considering that the last time he'd seen any of them had been at his first trial, he wasn't exactly thrilled with the idea of trying to contact them.

"Not really," he lied. "How am I supposed to get there? Walk?"

"Not my-"

"Not your problem, I know," he snapped. "What _is_ your problem? What do you get paid to do, other than enforce idiotic rules!"

"Jervis," a voice said warningly from behind him. He twitched backward to see his therapist shooting a disapproving look at him. He had almost forgotten that she was still there, lurking behind him like a dank little mushroom.

"I, uh..." he muttered. _Keep your temper, keep your temper_... "I suppose I could call...my cousin," he mumbled.

"What's his name?"

"Alexandra," Jervis replied after a moment's hesitation. He was fairly certain that he remembered little Lexie as being five, maybe six...and since he hadn't seen her since well before his criminal career had begun, surely she could drive by now.

The therapist examined him for a moment, then withdrew her hand from the phone. He paged through the phone book and found what was presumably his cousin's number.

The phone rang. And rang. And rang. He was just about to give up when a woman answered the phone, out of breath. "Hello?" she gasped.

"Alexandra?" Jervis inquired.

"Yes. Yes, this is she. Who am I speaking to?"

"This is your cousin Jervis," he said, trying to sound casually friendly. The earpiece quietly hissed staticy nothingness at him. "Hello?"

"...Jervis?" she squeaked quietly.

"Yes," he said, wincing at the unadulterated nervousness in her voice. "Can I be a terrible imposition and bother you to do me a favor?"

"A...favor?" she asked tremulously.

"Just a small one," he said charmingly, trying to ignore the two pairs of official eyes taking note of his every action. "I need transportation across town. I'm..."

He paused. He didn't want to say that he was being released. Being released meant that someone else thought it was their right to keep him - and even if it was, there was an element of servile humiliation in those words that made him cringe. But what other words could he possibly use to explain?

"I'm being released today," he said, forcing the uncomfortable words past his teeth, "and I don't have a car." Another long, trembling silence yawned into his ear. "Please," he added, trying very hard not to notice his therapist's look of satisfaction at his humility.

"I'll...I'll do it," she agreed haltingly, after a pause long enough to contain a game of chess. "How do I get there?"

* * *

Jervis waited uncomfortably on the asylum stairs, flanked by his therapist and the head administrator of the asylum. Uncomfortable silence surrounded them like a London fog, thick and concealing potential danger.

He didn't have a thing to say to either of them. Rather, he had too much to say, most of it along themes that would promptly get him into trouble again. Instead, he watched a tiny bird flitting merrily over the distant treetops.

A dark red minivan crested the hill and pulled into Arkham's spacious gravel drive, stones crunching briskly as the driver parked on the far side of the road. A young woman, curly black hair bouncing in the breeze, carefully got out of the van and crept toward the stairs.

"Hi...Jervis," she greeted, shifting uneasily from side to side.

"Hello, Alexandra." He turned to his companions, who were in no way watching him like a pair of hawks eyeing a baby rabbit nest. "Thank you," he said, because it was expected of him. And then, pointedly not tipping his hat, he trotted down the stairs toward his ride.

"Jervis!" The administrator dipped a hand into the pocket of his lab coat. "Don't forget these. The halfway house will have more," he added, gently tossing the small bottle of pills at Jervis' head.

Jervis reflexively caught them and stuffed them into his coat pocket. Then, without any further wastes of time, he clambered into the high passenger seat of the van and slammed the door hard between himself and Arkham Asylum.

Alexandra settled gingerly into the driver's seat. "Off we go," she said with brittle cheerfulness, stomping a heavy foot down onto the accelerator. Gravel shot up wildly around the tires as they barreled down the narrow road back to civilization.

Jervis unobtrusively felt for the handle molded into the door and held on tightly. He'd been down this road at these speeds before, but never in a vehicle that wasn't driven by a bat-faced vigilante.

Alexandra didn't look at him as they shot down the road. He'd obviously rather have her keep her eyes on where she was going, of course, but she'd barely even made eye contact with him before they'd got into the van. They jounced over a set of railroad tracks. Something small and pointy in the depths of the seat was jostled free just in time to stab Jervis in the lower back. He bit his lip and quietly extracted the whatever-it-was from behind himself.

A little toy car. Alexandra had children, then - well, at least one child. A child who liked cars, so probably a boy. He darted a glance into the second row of seats. The fabric of each seat was deeply stained with dirt, food, and other unnameable detritus, except for a pair of untouched squares which presumably supported car seats in normal times.

He cleared his throat. It was still another half-hour's ride to the halfway house. Maybe he could, just this once, have a normal conversation with someone.

Er.

How did normal conversations go again...

Commenting on the weather was out. All weather was lovely weather to an ex-inmate, be it blizzard or dust storm. He couldn't exactly bring up a good movie or a good book - rather, he _could_, but it would be anything but enjoyable for her, he supposed.

Oh! Of course!

"So how old is the little one?" he inquired.

_Skreeeee_! The van fishtailed to a halt on the shoulder of the on-ramp. "Who told you I had kids?" Alexandra demanded, eyes wide with panic.

He held up the little toy car. "I found this in my seat. It's all right," he tried to reassure her as she visibly paled. "You don't have to answer. I...I understand." Misery washed over him like an unexpected ocean wave. How was he going to make this work if he couldn't even talk to his cousin?

"They're fine," Alexandra answered stiffly. The van rumbled as she maneuvered it onto the expressway. "We're all...fine."

We? Was she married? He darted a glance at her. A tiny emerald-studded ring graced her right pinky. No other rings were present. No husband, which explained why she was still listed under Tetch in the phone book.

So much for that conversation. Maybe he'd just stay silent until they reached the halfway house.

No. This was little Alexandra, who he'd read poems to when she was small! Admittedly, they _had_ been Lewis Carroll's, but that hadn't meant anything at the time. She was family. There had to be something they could discuss.

Endless minutes ticked away. He had to say _something_.

"I'm not a criminal," he blurted as they turned the corner onto a busy downtown street.

"What do you mean?" Alexandra asked, carefully neutral.

"I know I made mistakes. I know I...got carried away," he tried to explain as they slowed for a red light. "Can't we go back to the way it was? When you were younger, you always used to love the games we'd-"

"I remember you from when I was little," she interrupted. "You _were_ fun. You're probably still that same old Jervis, somewhere in there. But I can't afford to wait around and find out." Her face hardened. "I know who you were. I know what you've been. No one lets me forget," she spat. "Do you know what it's like to grow up having the Mad Hatter in your family?"

It hadn't exactly been sunshine and roses on _his _side of the razor-wire fence, either, but he wasn't about to mention that.

She gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles went a peculiar yellowy-red. "You're out now," she said in a more level tone of voice, "and you might be reformed. But for all I know, you're only free because you convinced someone to let you go. Just remember this." She turned to him, ignoring the light that had just turned green. "If you ever, _ever_ lay a hand on one of my children, I will gut you like a fish." With that, she tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear and floored it through the intersection, eyes firmly on the road ahead.

Well. Any hope of cheerful family reunions was obviously futile. Rather than protest his future innocence, even if such a thing were possible to prove, he sat back in his seat and watched the novel sight of daytime Gotham passing by his window.

The van stopped abruptly in front of Wayne Gardens Halfway House. Alexandra, trembling with emotion and visibly regretting her earlier outburst, met his gaze and bit her lip. "If you really are reformed, I'm glad," she offered.

He nodded stiffly. Oh, of course she would be glad...glad that she wouldn't have to worry about her black sheep of a cousin Jervis showing up in her life again. "Thank you for the ride," he said flatly, sliding to the ground and shutting the door.

He brushed his coat off, ignoring the squeal of tires behind him as Alexandra made her grateful escape, and walked purposefully toward his new home.

(_to be continued_)

_Author's Note: By the way, I'm updating on Wednesday nights now. I apologize for missing last week - my best friend had her first baby, and I spent my time alternately helping her give birth and sleeping in the hospital bathtub. See you next week!_


	4. The Duchess and the Cat

According to poets, patriots, and prisoners, freedom is the most important thing in the world. Without freedom, what does anyone really have? Freedom opens all the doors and leads you into bright shiny meadows where opportunities frolic alongside wonderment and the world is yours for the taking.

Jervis Tetch, newly freed, slouched in front of the television and stared dismally at the foursome of characters arguing in a damp meadow. He'd been a free man for two entire weeks and life had pointedly not become a bundle of rainbows.

The halfway house, which was halfway to being a roach-infested flophouse, was normally abuzz with the wavering buzz of men trying at once to be the tough ex-cons that their fellows expected and the meek little lambs that the staff expected. At this point in the day, however, all of them had vanished to work their various jobs. Jervis, of course, was unemployed.

He shrunk a little lower in his chair at the thought of it. It wasn't as if he hadn't tried to get a job. He had applied at places all over town - labs, science departments, research facilities - and had heard exactly zero responses. There was always the bevy of jobs offered by Wayne Enterprises that were free for his taking thanks to his status as an ex-Arkhamite, but he had wanted to go somewhere new. Somewhere different. Somewhere where his fellow employees wouldn't have been told that his last known address was the big nuthouse on the hill.

But he'd burned all of his bridges with everyone else. Applying to all of the other jobs under a fake name had seemed like a good idea. He'd even managed to schedule several interviews, something that few scientists had the people skills to pull off. He'd arrived each time in a new suit, with a new hat perched on his neatly combed hair and a new briefcase clutched in one slightly sweaty palm. The receptionists would bypass his couture and direct their attention solely on his all-too-recognizable beaky face, trying their best to suppress their terror at seeing one of Gotham's most infamous sitting meekly in the waiting room. Needless to say, the interviews had all been abruptly canceled before he could even set foot into a prospective employer's office.

He stared glumly at the screen, where the foursome was being pursued by a pack of four-legged beasts through a gridded forest. Maybe he'd have to take that Wayne Enterprises job after all. At least it would get the house manager off of his back. And with his paycheck, he could buy some food that wasn't old meat masked with overpowering spices and clothes that weren't too long in the sleeves. He'd also love a cup of tea, although he wouldn't love the six-hour scolding that would invariably accompany it. Tea, as he'd been forcibly reminded, was too much a part of his old life to ever enter his new one.

"Turn it off." He jerked out of his thoughts to see the house manager standing between himself and the television, a clipboard held loosely in the crook of her arm.

"Might I ask why?" he asked politely as he obediently reached for the remote.

"You know," she snapped. "You're not supposed to be watching that. No Wonderland, remember?"

"My dear woman," he said, affronted, "this is an adaptation of the Wizard of Oz!"

"Same thing. Off!"

Same thing? _Same thing_? He gritted his teeth as a storm of rage howled inside his head, blurring his vision and sending sweat beads to pop out on the back of his neck as inventive murder flashed through his mind. "You're right," he agreed, forcing the words from rebellious lips. "I'll just go to my room."

"And fill out job applications," the woman added imperiously.

"I have already applied to every laboratory and research center in the city," he informed her coldly.

She rolled her eyes. "Well, while you're waiting for them to call you back, here." She tossed the clipboard at him. It flapped through the air, pages riffling in the breeze, and _thwack_ed solidly into his lap. "Get to work," she ordered as she stomped away.

He flipped through the neatly clipped stack of applications. Temps Unlimited. Office Depot. _McDonalds_.

It had been suggested to him that, in times of stress, taking a deep calming breath could make the situation seem easier. Jervis inhaled until his lungs felt like two small dirigibles and slowly breathed out.

_McDonalds_.

Fury propelled him off of the couch and into his poky little room, where he slammed the door shut and kicked his bed as hard as he could. The _nerve_ of that woman! He was brilliant at microcircuitry and his knowledge of the human mind (or at least, how to hotwire it) was _unmatched_. How _dare_ she reduce him to the level of...of...

...of _normal_ people!

There was a light triple tap on the door. Letting another dirigible sigh escape from his lungs, he steadied himself and opened the door.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Tetch!" The medication nurse, round and happy, wheeled her tiny cart into his room and shut the door behind her. He felt the muscles in his shoulders relaxing as she fussed with her cart. Her visits were rapidly becoming the only bright spot in his day, marred only by the cart full of those damnable little pills. "I've got something for you," she sing-songed.

He obediently held out his hand, waiting for the usual tiny paper cup. Instead, from under a folded cloth napkin, she withdrew a mug of...

TEA!

"Mrs. Dodgson, you are a queen among women," he said in a worshipful groan, taking the mug and drawing a deep sip into his mouth.

"Oh, anything I can do," she dismissed, blushing slightly. "Are you having any luck with your job search?"

"No. It's not..." He paused. He had been about to say that he wasn't being treated fairly, which he wasn't, but no one else seemed to see it that way. Okay, so he had killed a handful of people over the years, but that didn't mean he was about to go on a merry murdering spree at any moment. He had _never_ done that, and he wasn't about to start.

"It's not going well," he sighed, glancing sidelong at the clipboard of applications laying facedown on his bed.

"I'm glad to hear it. Not that you're having trouble," she corrected herself when he looked at her with confusion in his eyes, "but that you haven't found anything yet. I may have found you something."

Any residual rage left over from the house manager left him in a burning explosion of hope. "You have?"

"My cousin breeds lab rats. I know it's not much, but it's something..." she said, twisting the hem of her sweater nervously in one hand. Her long nails plucked at the fabric as it twined around them.

Hope vanished quickly as a flower in the frost. "He doesn't know who I am," he guessed flatly.

"He knows," she reassured quickly. "But he knows you reformed, too, and he's willing to give you a chance. I...may have persuaded him," she dimpled.

"I'll take it," he agreed instantly. "Mrs. Dodgson, you are truly a wonderful woman."

"Thank you," she said, somehow opening the door and easing her cart through in one smooth motion. She was barely in the hallway a moment before she popped back in. "I'm...not really a Mrs., you know," she said furtively.

He blinked, uncertain. Was she flirting with him? No, that was ridiculous, women did not flirt with Jervis Tetch. He examined her as she fiddled with the top of her cart, noting the blush staining her cheeks.

She _was_ flirting with him!

"That's lovely to hear," he smiled. She grinned back at him and disappeared into the hallway, only to reappear again before he could contemplate this unexpected development.

"In all the fuss, I forgot your medication! Here you are," she said, handing over the little paper cup.

"Thank you," he said, regarding her second gift with anything but thankfulness in his heart. Here in front of him was the only woman in recent history to treat him as anything but dirt under her spike heels. "You wouldn't care to..." Oh, what the hell. "Would you like to have dinner some night?"

"Oh! I work nights at a different job," she said apologetically.

"Ah." Well, it had been worth a shot. "In that case, I-"

"But breakfast would be good!" she interrupted in a rush. "Thursday at, say, six o'clock?"

"Six o'clock would be wonderful," he agreed.

"I'll see you then!" She bustled out of the room, grinning at him over her shoulder as she left.

In one fell swoop, he had a job and a date for Thursday. Well! Perhaps sanity wasn't _all_ bad.

(_to be continued_)


	5. TeaParty

_Author's Note: I want to apologize for many things - namely, the lack of updates and the lack of quality control in this story. I've made several sleepiness-induced mistakes that make me cringe, some of which were pointed out by my oh-so-lovely bevy of reviewers. (Constructive criticism makes me very happy. Without criticism, how does one know what they're doing wrong?) I'll be going back and fixing all those nasty little mistakes when I get a moment. (Not that moments are particularly easy to get - toddlers with unpredictable schedules keep me hopping!) In the meantime, let's press onward!_

Jervis Tetch had spent quite a large part of his criminal career developing the art of stealth. His way had always been the way of misdirection and sly manipulation. After all, one could hardly walk up to one's target and politely request that they try on this lovely hat, particularly in this savage age where hats were a rare sight indeed.

His talent for sneakiness had come in handy on numerous occasions. It had helped him ease through Arkham's hallways without being bothered by the guards, it had aided him in easing certain valuable samples of haberdashery out of their museum cases, and it had assisted him mightily in gluing the occasional little 'gift' to the backs of his fellow rogues' necks. (Sadly, it hadn't seemed to help him avoid the following beatings, but such was life.)

At the moment, it was helping him to avoid the thick-necked matron of the halfway house as she argued with a coffee vendor over exactly how much foam should be in her cappuccino. "Surely," she pointed out with a reddening face, "a cup of coffee should be mostly liquid. Surely there should be no more than an inch or two of foam instead of an inch or two of coffee!"

Jervis, hidden uncomfortably in the nearby bushes, tried to pry a twig out from under his kneecap without attracting any attention. Surely she could have picked a better time to buy coffee, his thoughts hissed. Surely she could have come to work at her _normal_ time and saved him the trouble of doing a swan dive into the shrubbery to avoid her.

He leaned backward. The twig under his kneecap stuck stubbornly to his pants while a new group of twigs made friends with the back of his neck. _Go away, go away_, he thought desperately as the manager of the halfway house bickered stubbornly with the coffee vendor. _He's not giving you a refund, he never gives refunds, go away! I don't have _time_ for this_!

He was due at the restaurant in...he managed a silent glance at his watch...seven minutes. He could still get there if he left right now. He waited, chewing on his bottom lip, as the argument intensified. Arms flailed in the air as if the combatants were being attacked by invisible bees. Threats were made regarding the safety and hygiene of one another's businesses, coupled by a few cutting remarks about hair and clothing. Finally, with all the grace that she ever showed, the manager flung the cheap paper cup into the street and stalked lividly around the corner. The puddle of offensively foamy coffee dribbled into the sewers.

Jervis exploded out of the bushes, holding his hat firmly onto his head as he pelted down the sidewalk. His other hand beat frantically at his clothing, trying to erase all traces of his little roll in the mud. Four minutes. He could make it. He could make it!

Eleven minutes later, he skidded breathlessly into La Foresta Cafe. A strand of fake ivy promptly whacked him in the face, nearly missing his eye. "Table for one?" the waitress asked, leaning idly on her stand.

"I'm...meeting...someone..." he gasped, straightening his hat.

"Oh." The waitress squinted uselessly at the mounds of foliage that covered every table. "What's he look like?"

"_She_ has brown hair, blue eyes -"

A hand tipped with long red nails shot into the air from a nearby table and beckoned urgently. He nodded stiffly to the waitress and scampered toward the clump of foliage that contained -

"Ms. Dodgson," he beamed, settling himself in the empty chair. "You're looking lovely, as always."

Ms. Dodgson smiled bashfully. "Oh, please, call me Lucy."

"Lucy," he repeated obediently. "And you, of course, must call me Jervis."

"Jervis it is," she said. "Here's your menu...Jervis." She held out a neon-green plastic sheet adorned with a huge plastic flower.

He smiled at her and examined his choices. There was a severe lack of the usual side dishes that accompanied breakfast. There were no potatoes, no tomatoes - ah, but then, there wouldn't be at La Foresta, would there? He had almost forgotten that the place was run by Poison Ivy, which was possibly some sort of early sign of dementia given that the entire place was plastered with plant life.

Oh well. The menu had plenty of animal products. While trying to decide between a ham omelet and steak and eggs, he snuck a casual peek over his menu at his...dared he think it?...his date.

Ms. Dodgson - Lucy - had her eyes fixed firmly on her menu. She was a wonderful woman. It wasn't merely the name, although that had done more to gain his attention than a burning skyscraper full of screaming orphans might have. It wasn't that she had a fabulous body, because she certainly didn't. Plus-size stores and dessert manufacturers would never go out of business while Ms. Dodgson was around.

As depressing as it was to think it, she was probably so interesting because she was the only woman in recent history to ask how he was doing and mean it. She actually cared about him. Why? He wasn't certain. Women didn't tend to cozy up to him unless they wanted something, and given that they were cozying up to _him_, that something usually tended to be more about mind control than mushy stuff.

But that didn't matter. What mattered was that he was on a date with a woman who was nice to him. As a bonus, she had a beautiful speaking voice. He wondered if she ever cared to read aloud...

* * *

Lucy Dodgson examined her would-be beau through the translucent green of her menu. He was sneaking looks at her while pretending to be examining the large red flower atop his menu. It was adorable.

Unlike Jervis, she knew exactly why she enjoyed being in his company. She had gone on dates before, both with men who made disparaging remarks about her weight and men who urged her to eat more in what she could only think of as a _hungry_ fashion. She wasn't quite certain which breed of men made her the most uneasy.

Jervis stood out from these clods like a tulip in a sea of dandelions. He had perfect manners, even when she had first met him as nothing but a nurse who he obviously should have distrusted. He had a British accent, and whether it was real or feigned, she didn't know and didn't care. He was such a sweet, harmless-looking little man...

And yes, he had killed people. Yes, he had taken over the minds of a large section of the Gotham populace. But so what? That was before he began taking his medication. Just because he was mentally ill didn't mean that he was evil. As long as he took his medication, they could be perfectly happy together - and she'd certainly be able to tell if he ever stopped taking it. It would be easy to cajole him back to the land of sanity if he slipped.

He had worked diligently to prove that he was sane, and Lucy was willing to support that with every fiber of her being.

Breakfast arrived surprisingly quickly after they ordered it. It was perhaps a little dry, perhaps a little burned, but neither of them noticed. They toyed with the mildly unappetizing meal as they chatted.

They couldn't discuss many things. The halfway house was not a topic that either of them felt comfortable discussing, given that they were carrying on this conversation in direct defiance of its rules. Jervis' previous place of residence - Arkham - was also out, as well as most of his previous life. His friends (such as they were) his previous job (such as it was) and his life (if one could call it that) were made up almost entirely of things that he didn't care to discuss.

The conversation had drifted to talk of his new job. Breeding lab rats was not particularly exciting, but it had its moments. He'd already suggested one or two changes to the breeding program with regards to the genetic charts in order to make the rats a little less standardized. After all, if labs would pay for normal rats, surely someone out there wanted fat rats, thin rats, and rats that were, say, intelligent enough to drink a doll-sized cup of tea.

Lucy was enthusiastic about his contributions. He obviously cared enough about the job to put some thought into how to improve it, and wasn't that a bold step in the direction of sanity? She took another bite of eggs and nodded happily as Jervis described a particular quirk of rat genetics that he was eager to exploit.

* * *

The chat might have gone on all day if it hadn't been for Lucy's pager. When it went off in a flurry of beeping, she glanced at the clock and turned white. "We're late!"

"Let's go," Jervis suggested, rising and offering his hand to help her out of her chair. She beamed and took it, standing up perhaps a touch slower than she could have in order to maintain their contact.

He squeezed her hand softly and released it. "Same time next week?" he said hopefully.

"It's a date," she smiled, scurrying through the piled foliage toward the door.

Jervis picked up the bill and sauntered toward the front door, brushing by a man reading a newspaper with a headline that blared RICHARDSON ELECTED FOR CITY COUNCIL. He paid the waiter, tipped him twice as much as he should have, and headed out to the street with a song in his heart and a smile on his face.

Inside, the man folded his newspaper and quietly tucked it under his arm. Then, without a word, he trailed after the diminutive ex-supervillain.

(_to be continued_)


	6. Card Soldiers and the Mock Turtle

Fall was not a particularly pleasant season in Gotham City. Dismal grey clouds blanketed the sky, sending a steady drizzle of acidic rain dripping down on the commuters and joggers. The leaves from the few surviving trees built up in piles in the gutters, turning into semiliquid brown sludge as rainwater slowly dissolved them. The icy muck smelled terrible.

So when Jervis Tetch unthinkingly put a foot down in the middle of it on his way home from work, his swearing seemed like a perfectly normal reaction. That is, unless you listened closely to what he was saying.

"_Mimsy_ _slithy_ _mome-raths_! _Gyring, gimbling borogroves!_" he hissed as he flicked decaying leaves off of his cracked and worn secondhand shoes. He flopped down heavily on the curb and scraped disgustedly at the mess with a piece of trash.

"_Mimsy_, huh?" a deep voice growled from behind him.

Jervis froze, liquid mulch dripping from his shoe. "Uh...yes," he muttered. "No! I meant miserable, not _mimsy_..." Backsliding in front of the Batman. Could the night get any worse? He turned to face the Bat.

Instead of a single caped figure, there were four rather large, burly men. Jervis leapt to his feet as if he'd been sitting on a cattle prod. It meant he was now standing ankle-deep in leafwater, but he didn't care about that. He was more concerned with the quartet of thugs that were now slipping various weapons out of their pockets.

Jervis reflexively fumbled in his own pockets for mind-control devices and found none. "I warn you," he lied nervously, not removing his hands from his pockets, "I'm armed."

"We heard from the boss that you aren't the Hatter any more," the head thug purred, "so you can drop the act."

"And yer wallet," a thug beside him said in a voice rich with amused menace.

"Now, listen," Jervis stammered, splashing back a few inches in the rancid puddle, "your boss was right, I'm not the Mad Hatter anymore, so you can go back and tell him-"

"Her," a thug corrected. "And she ain't happy with you."

He could have guessed that with both eyes shut. "I'm sure I can make it up to her," he suggested hopefully. After all, in Gotham's underworld you had to be a little flexible. If you were going to refuse to associate with someone simply because he had a little skin disorder or a touch of psychosis, you were liable to find yourself on the wrong end of an appropriately theme-colored revolver one day. Surely anyone who would hire _him_ would have to be a little understanding...whoever they were.

The leader of the group extracted a well-worn newspaper from his pocket. "The boss went to a lot of trouble," he explained, slowly unfolding it. "A _lot_ of trouble. She even paid you in advance an entire year ago! And just look what happened." The headline - oddly familiar - screamed the message RICHARDSON ELECTED FOR CITY COUNCIL.

Jervis felt his heart plummet directly into his socks. Criminals in Gotham didn't have to be flexible if they were, say, the kind of trust-funded well-armed sadistic manipulator that only the finest of educations could produce. If you were Tara Moretti, you didn't need to worry about making anyone angry. When trouble arose, she and her well-trained cadre of henchmen could take care of it - and if they couldn't handle it, she could always bat her eyes and ask for the help of her loving cousins, the Falcones.

"Ms. Moretti is very disappointed in you," the leader continued, throwing the paper onto the ground. "You promised to help _her_ win that election." He affected a look of shock. "You didn't _forget_, did you?"

"I...I..." Jervis stammered, knowing that no excuse he came up with would ever satisfy them. "I could still do it!" he chattered nervously. "I'd just have to hat Richardson and make him forfeit - "

"It's too late for that. He won," the leader said, shaking his head as if Jervis was a top student who had just said that one and one made five. "Everyone would think that Ms. Moretti was second best, and we can't have that, now can we?"

The trio of thugs at the leader's back shifted ever so slightly toward him as he eyed a nearby alley. If he ran, they were certain to chase him. But if he stayed - well, his odds of survival were looking pretty bleak either way.

He dug his hands into his pockets and yanked out the only things he had - a little bible that someone had forced on him at a street corner and a stack of business cards - and flung them in the faces of the thugs. They instinctively dropped back. Anyone who ignored what a rogue threw at them tended not to survive the experience.

By the time they realized they'd been attacked with a relatively harmless selection of paper, Jervis had scuttled madly down the nearest alley. _Oh please let me get away_, he prayed to the open air. _Oh please oh please oh please_ he chanted in time with his running feet as he thudded wildly down the twisty alleys.

He'd only managed to get two blocks away before they caught up with him. A heavy hand smacked down hard on his shoulder and pulled, twisting him so that he ran directly into a brick wall. He staggered back, stunned, and found himself in the arms of one of the thugs.

"I'll repay her!" he stammered, watching the other three close in. "Double!"

The head thug cracked his knuckles meaningfully. "It's too late for that."

The honorable thing for him to do would have been to close his mouth and accept his beating. Rogues didn't cower, rogues didn't beg. Rogues had pride.

Unfortunately, he wasn't a rogue anymore, and pride wasn't going to keep him out of the hospital. "_Let me alone,_" he gibbered, uselessly struggling in the big man's grip as the other three readied their weapons. "Please-"

A fist cracked hard into his mouth. "Shut up," the thug advised him as blood trickled down his chin.

* * *

They'd left him alive. He could hardly believe it.

Of course, they'd left him alive in a noxious puddle, bleeding copiously out of his many new wounds. He groaned as the wind whipped filthy water into the cut on his forehead. Oh, naturally they'd left him alive. Dead men couldn't repay the vast amounts of money he owed to the ever-so-persuasive Ms. Moretti.

Which meant that they'd be back, sooner or later, and he had no hope of repaying them. Well, just because they'd left him alive for now didn't mean he'd stay alive if he laid in this alleyway all night. He had to get back to the halfway house.

But the halfway house was so far away...and he didn't have any medical supplies there. He'd foolishly reasoned that he wouldn't have any need for them, since lab rat breeders tended not to attract much interest. What an idiot he'd been. He could possibly ask the house manager for medical help...but how could he explain his injuries without bringing up their connection to his past? If she suspected him of backsliding, she could send him right back to Arkham, and nothing said 'criminal' like late-night meetings with thugs in alleys. The fact that they were ambushing him at the time wouldn't matter to her.

Slowly, carefully, he uncurled himself from the fetal position he'd been in for the last two hours. They hadn't left a square inch of him untouched. Everything, _everything_ hurt. At least when Batman had been the one doling out the beatings, he had dropped him off at the hospital afterward...

Jervis dragged himself to the mouth of the alley and squinted up at the street sign. Oh. He had a lair around here somewhere, didn't he? Yeah, a few blocks away. He could make it there. Probably. And if he didn't, if he died on the street, it wouldn't really matter, would it? At least he wouldn't have to worry about paying Tara Moretti back.

With this and other cheery thoughts in his mind, he slowly crawled to his old hideout. They hadn't broken anything - much, he amended as several cracked ribs flared with pain. At least he could still crawl. The concrete sidewalks rasped through his pants as he forced himself along, leaving the last block or so of his path dotted with blood spots.

The door to the lair danced tantalizingly in front of him. With one exhausted hand he turned the knob and pushed it open.

No one had found it. No Bat had trashed it, no homeless guy had camped in his kitchen. It was just as he'd left it a few miserable months ago.

With a sigh, he pulled himself up onto the couch and collapsed. The room went fuzzy at the edges as his battered body screamed at him. He was starting to develop a severe hatred of the world and everything in it.

This wasn't fair. This wasn't _right_. He'd reformed, hadn't he? He was one of the good guys now, or at least as close as most people got to being good. Why had he bothered with it when he still ended up bruised, battered, and broken?

Something was stabbing him in the neck. He fumbled beneath his head and drew out his old, battered copy of _The Complete Lewis Carroll_.

It was all coming back to him. Now he was remembering what had drawn him to Alice's world in the first place, her Wonderland where nothing was fair and nothing was right but it was _supposed_ to be that way. Babies turned into pigs and that was okay. The Mock Turtle wept and the Jabberwock was dead and it was okay.

This dirty, concrete-filled world of pain, this was not what he'd wanted at all. He'd wanted...what? A friendly word now and again? A relationship with someone that didn't involve his mind-control chips? He'd wanted to live in the world that everyone else got to live in, the world where nice things really did happen and where savage beatings were a thing of myth.

He let the book fall open in his lap. "_I have a fairy by my side which says I must not sleep, When once in pain I loudly cried it said 'You must not weep'._"

Mustn't. Now _there_ was a word he'd heard too often recently. Mustn't go to his old lairs. Mustn't talk to the Dormouse. Mustn't touch electronics, mustn't drink tea, mustn't read Lewis Carroll.

"'_What may I do?' at length I cried, tired of the painful task. The fairy quietly replied, and said 'You must not ask.'" _

He stared down at the simple poem, gently touching it with bloodied fingers. How could a man living a hundred years before he was born know exactly what he was feeling? How could it be that a short passage of words could glow in his mind and make him feel understood - something that no one had ever made him feel in his entire life?

It had been a bad day. Slowly, without really thinking about it, Jervis turned the pages back to the familiar beginning of the story. As Alice tumbled down the rabbit-hole, a smile began to creep onto his bruised and swelling face. The key was on the table, there was a beautiful garden behind the door, and everything was going to be all right in the end.

Alone, curled on the tattered couch, Jervis sank into Wonderland with the White Rabbit beaming out from between his dirty, bloodstained fingers.

(_to be continued_)


	7. The Trial

There is no force on earth that burns as brightly as obsessive love. It has caused wars, torn apart families, and inspired generations of idiots to singlemindedly chase Mr. Right and die alone instead of spending a happy life with Mr. Pretty Good. And sure, it makes for a good movie, but how many movies would you honestly want to live through?

When the focus of that obsessive love is a piece of fiction, it is even more dangerous. A book will never slap you with a restraining order. A movie will never be upset if you lock yourself in the basement with it for hours on end. Your favorite album will never clip its toenails at the dinner table or snore or demand that you go outside and talk to strangers.

It will also never love you back. But to some people, that doesn't really matter.

* * *

The Mad Hatter, dressed in his favorite green coat and checkered suit, strolled happily down the sidewalk. His oversized top hat, tipped stylishly to the side, hugged his head tightly as he meandered along.

After a few hellish weeks of recovery, he was finally feeling like his old self again. Three weeks of doing whatever he wanted whenever he wanted had done wonders toward perking up those bits of his mind that he'd thought had vanished forever. If he wanted to sketch Alice while eating breakfast, no one was around to stop him. If he wanted to read Through the Looking-Glass while he snuggled under a blanket and listened to the rain rattling on the roof, no one was there to force him to go to bed. And if he wanted to re-enact bits of his favorite tea party with his henchmen and a suitable borrowed Alice, he could...well, in point of fact he _couldn't_, since he didn't have an Alice on hand at the moment.

Ah well. There would be time enough for that sort of fun later. For now, he had business, and business of a most delightful sort indeed.

The Villa Roma Towers loomed above the streets of Gotham. The classical statuary and intricate relief sculptures placed tastefully on the building made it quite clear that this was a building strictly for the well-to-do. The handful of well-suited men leaning casually on the brickwork indicated that these particular well-to-do inhabitants would perhaps not be above outfitting trespassers with a personalized set of concrete footwear and giving them a free tour of Gotham's riverbeds.

Jervis ambled up to the one nearest the door and tipped his hat politely. The large man squinted crossly down at him. "Go away," he snarled. Then, with a jolt of recognition, he leaned down and inspected the small man in the enormous hat. "Tetch? _Here_?" He smiled a slow, sharky smile and took Jervis by the shoulder. "It's my lucky day," he grinned, steering Jervis inside. They hustled past a man wheeling a rack of twenty identical black suits and stepped into the elevator just as the doors opened. The man with the suit rack shoved his way in after them, running over Jervis' foot with one small metal wheel. Jervis held his tongue and pointedly shifted away from the sartorial madman.

After a brief ride in the small, tastefully decorated elevator, they arrived at the penthouse. A pair of nearly identical men flanking the door eyed Jervis and his escort as they approached. "Got any guns?" the man on the left barked as the suit-rack man disappeared down the expensively tiled hallway.

Jervis shook his head. The man on the right stepped forward and briskly ran his hands along Jervis' body, shifting his shoulders to settle his black suit jacket as he stood back up. "No guns." Almost as an afterthought, he popped off Jervis' hat and examined it, twisting the felt between his fingers to check for hidden wiring or suspicious buttons. "He's clean." The man on the left slipped a suspicious hand under his black jacket to caress his handgun as the Mad Hatter opened the door.

Tara Moretti had a wonderful penthouse. Lush, thick carpet stretched from wall to wall in a beautiful ruby color that probably did wonders for masking bloodstains. Spindly modern furniture, jet-black, housed an array of subordinates all in the same style of black suit. Ms. Moretti lounged on an oversized armchair at the head of the room, idly chastising her second-in-command as he fiddled with a seam on his own armchair.

Jervis trotted affably alongside his escort as he was manhandled into the lady's presence. "Ms. Moretti," the escort said deferentially, "the Mad Hatter to see you."

"Mister Tetch," she breathed, leaning slightly forward with interest. "I wasn't expecting you." She raised a dark, delicately plucked eyebrow at the man with the deathgrip on Jervis' arm. "You may go."

"Yes, ma'am," the escort said, withdrawing obediently to his post in the plaza.

Moretti returned her attention to Jervis as he straightened his slightly wrinkled sleeve. "Well, Mr. Tetch," she purred, crossing her spike-heeled feet as she studied him. "What _am_ I to do with you? You've been a very naughty boy, you know."

He lowered his head slightly in acknowledgment of her accusation.

"Have you come with a way to make it up to me? I'm afraid that I can't think of a single thing that you could do to please me," she drawled, her light accent barely caressing the words as they emerged. A speck of dust on one blood-red fingernail caught her eye, and she lightly flicked it away with a casual flip of her hand.

He shrugged.

"You _do_ have a reason to be here?" she asked, irritated by his insolence. "What do you have to say to me?"

He narrowed his eyes. He could say a lot of things to her, mostly about the use of henchmen to injure one of the most notorious rogues in the city. He could say a good deal to her about letting things go and doing things for oneself and the fact that relying on anyone who had a permanent cell at Arkham was about as stupid as relying on cats not to eat mice.

Instead, he politely tipped his hat once more as he bit down on the transmitter tucked inside his mouth. Every minion in the room rose to their feet as he spat the bit of plastic and metal into his hand. "Gentlemen?" he said, watching the panic rise in Moretti's eyes.

"_Off with her head_."

As one, the henchmen advanced on their boss. Whatever loyalties they'd had to her were being firmly overridden by the little mind-control chips that Jervis had so thoughtfully placed under the collars of each of those conveniently identical suits that Ms. Moretti insisted her henchmen wear. While it would have been nearly impossible to break into the suit storage room in the penthouse, it was wonderfully easy to pay an after-hours visit to the dry cleaner and leave his little presents scattered in all the right places...

"No! No, you _can't_!" Tara Moretti, flushed, flustered, and furious, perched haphazardly on top of a seven-foot-high geometric sculpture and aimed her gun at the crowd of minions clustered around her. Mindlessly, they pawed at her feet as she frantically skipped to stay out of reach. "Stop it! I _order_ you to stop! I -"

Jervis closed the door quietly behind him and, humming a sprightly little tune, stepped into the vacant elevator. As the door slid closed and he began to descend, he could hear the welcome sound of screaming echoing from above him.

He smiled politely to the dead-eyed security staff frozen in the plaza and sauntered homeward, stopping for a moment to admire a stubborn spray of tiny flowers in the crack of the sidewalk that bloomed despite the brisk fall weather. He picked one, rolling it between his fingers, and toyed with it as he walked along. The sound of glass falling twenty stories to shatter on the concrete was music to his ears.

A booming swell of happiness rose inside him, filling him from top to toe with wondrous fizzing excitement. He'd gone a long way toward ensuring that Ms. Moretti wouldn't bother him again - if she survived, that was - and toward establishing that he was back. His compatriots were certain to sit up and take notice at this day's work! He could start hiring again - better henchmen this time, and maybe he could acquire an Alice who wasn't a kidnap victim. The lair just didn't seem right without a...girl...around...

_Lucy_! He bit his lip, looking from side to side as if she were about to appear. How could he have forgotten about her? He'd been busy, what with the beating and the sabotage and all, but...well, surely she'd understand if he called her. Surely everything would be all right.

He hurried down the road at a speed just under a run until he managed to spot a derelict pay-phone lurking behind a gas station. He fumbled a few coins into the slot and dialed the number for the halfway house.

On the third ring, someone picked up. "Yeah?" grunted one of his ex-housemates.

"_Nurse_," he gasped, mildly out of breath with the exertion of running and the sudden lung-crushing grip of anxiety.

"Hang on. Dodgson?" the voice yelled.

There was a burst of static as someone else picked up the phone. "Hello?" Lucy Dodgson asked, briskly friendly.

"..._Hello_," Jervis murmured, trying to catch his breath.

"Jervis?" Lucy asked, a note of genuine concern in her voice. "Jervis, where are you?"

"I'm..." he hesitated.

"You're not in trouble, are you? Where've you been? What happened?"

_I was beaten up_. No. He couldn't bring himself to say it, not to the one woman in this city that actually had some kind of respect for him. "I..."

"Jervis, hon, you need to get back here right away," Lucy said in a low voice. Obviously someone was nearby, listening. "The police are out looking for you and Ms. Jacobs said that the Batman asked her where you were last night - yes, Gloria, two cups of rice," she said loudly, presumably for the benefit of her unknown watcher. "I'll see you tonight, won't I?" she asked hopefully.

Oh, he wanted to say yes. He wished that he could say yes...

But he had debts to repay, and injuries to heal from, and...and he couldn't just stroll back to the halfway houses like this, not in his Hatter garb, not after doing his best to annihilate Tara Moretti. He'd be back inside Arkham so fast that his feet would leave scorch marks on the pavement. And then would come the interrogations, the investigations, and the discovery of his abortive romance...If the police found out that Lucy had been friendly to him...or, worse, that he'd been friendly to her...word would get back to Moretti, and she and her associates might not stop at hurting only him.

He cleared his throat. "_Alice began to remember that she was a Pawn, and that it would soon be time for her to move._"

"Jervis?" Lucy said, fear edging into her voice. "What are you saying? You don't sound like yourself."

"_It's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then._" He twisted the phone line in his fingers. "_At the end of FOUR, I shall say good-bye. And at the end of FIVE, I shall go!_"

"No, Jervis, wait!" Lucy said frantically. "Don't-"

But he had already placed the phone neatly back on its little latch. The change he'd used to make the call rattled down through the machinery of the phone as he turned away.

* * *

_Author's Note: I apologize for missing updates. Parenthood is extremely time-consuming. And while this is the end of Jervis' story, and the end of my updates for the year, fear not! I shall be back in January, hopefully with enough rough drafts so that I don't find myself trying to write something entertaining while I'm three-quarters of the way asleep on Wednesday nights. Have a safe and happy holiday season and I'll see you next year!_


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